Housing Production in Dunstable
The Town of Dunstable is working with NMCOG to update their 2016-2020 Housing Production Plan to guide decisions on how to create affordable housing and how we can work toward making sure all people can afford a home that meets their needs. As part of this effort, the Town’s Affordable Housing Committee, in conjunction with NMCOG, has developed a short survey on the needs, goals and future for housing in Dunstable. The survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete and the survey is available here.
A Housing Production Plan is a framework for discussing 40B Comprehensive Permit projects, zoning changes, Community Preservation Act (CPA) fund expenditures, Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) expenditures, and other actions the Town and its partners can undertake to increase the supply of affordable housing.
A current Housing Production Plan can provide preference in One Stop funding applications and has other regulatory functions.
Opportunity for community to come together with a pro-active vision of how to meet housing needs as communities grow and change.
The Housing Production Plan can identify the barriers preventing building affordable housing and recommend mitigation for these barriers.
Why Plan for Housing?
According to the UMass Donahue Institute, the number of new units being permitted is not keeping up with projected new households. This has resulted in families “doubling” or “tripling up” in units in some communities and pushing costs higher than wages.
Our state has a housing affordability crisis!
As shown in the chart above, this housing cost burden has disproportionately fallen on Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino/a populations.
This crisis extends to Greater Lowell and Dunstable!
A standard metric for affordability is that a household should spend 30% or less of its annual income on housing costs like rent or mortgage and utilities.
A median family of 3 earns $126,500 in the Greater Lowell region, and 30% of that is ~$3,162.50 monthly.
A household spending 30% to 50% is considered “moderately burdened” and a household spending more than 50% is considered “severely burdened”
Although Dunstable’s median income is relatively high, there are many households with lower incomes.
Households earning less than 80% of the Area Median Income are considered low income and generally eligible for subsidized housing. For example, a family of 3 in Greater Lowell earning $80,500 would generally be eligible.
In 2016-20, 194 Dunstable households, or 17.0% of all Dunstable households, were estimated to have incomes at or below 80% of the Area Median Family Income.
Currently, there are no subsidized housing units in Dunstable, despite the goal of over 100 units.
Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2015-2019 CHAS Data, and U.S. Census Bureau, 2016-2020 American Community Survey
Dunstable has a large proportion of quickly-growing age groups such as young people and seniors.
Dunstable is growing at a faster rate than the Greater Lowell region.
Dunstable’s 60-74 year old cohort has grown substantially in the last 20 years.
The number of Dunstable residents who are 20-34 years old has grown as much as the number of people who are 60-74 years old, but the number who are 75 Years old and above is projected to grow most.
Limited housing production in Dunstable results in median sales price no longer affordable to the median family, let alone a family just starting out.
If they were buying today, the median Dunstable home would not be affordable to at least 48.6% of the Dunstable Population.
For a $655,000 home, the median home sales price in 2021, monthly payments would be over $4,000.
A household would need to earn approximately $164,720 per year for the mortgage on a median priced house for it to be affordable (the standard metric for affordability is that a household spends 30% or less of its income on housing costs like rent or mortgage and utilities).
A median family earns $126,500 in the Greater Lowell region, and 30% of that is ~$3,162.50 monthly
Dunstable has a very small number of rental units compared to Lowell’s other Suburbs.
The housing cost burden falls particularly on small families and elders living alone – the family types that are growing in Dunstable.
An estimated 50% of nonfamily households with at least one member over age 62 were cost burdened.
Small non-elder families was estimated as the household type with the second-largest number of households (76 households, or 13%) burdened.
The burden of high costs also falls disproportionately on lower income households.
Conclusions
Homeownership is increasingly out of reach for the median income earner, creating concerns about fair access to housing.
There are a significant number of residents who make very low incomes and extremely low incomes, and their housing needs aren’t being met.
Two family housing is not allowed in roughly 97.1% of the town, and the large lot minimums (two acres) may encourage large, expensive housing.
Dunstable has very few rentals compared to its peer suburbs in Greater Lowell.
There is a large and growing number of people under 35 years who may be living at their parents’ home but will need affordable, appropriate housing to form new households of their own.
A quickly-growing number of households are people 65 years or older living alone, and they are most likely to face housing cost burdens.